Web sense

Having an effective website is fast becoming the focus of attention. Companies are under increasing pressure to defend the money spent on their website.

Just as every business owner should be keeping statistics to see how their business is doing, so should you be keeping track of what is happening on your website.

Measurement tells the story – and gives you direction. Without statistics you don't know where you are and you can't assess how far you are from your goals.

The Web has moved from being a new technology information medium, to being a sales channel and your marketing department should be intimately involved with your website - they should know exactly who is coming to the site and why.

The measurements you keep have to fit your business and your audience. The days of just getting a website up and counting eyeballs and hits is long gone. You need to know where they come from, what they came for, how long they stay, which pages they visit, what their click path is and if they ever reach your "goal page." And you should know which page they leave from.

Now is the time to update your Web measurement strategy with new metrics and analysis tools that can help analyse customer behaviour and improve your site's business success.

"There is no one metric that a company can rely on for its website," said Randy Souza, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass-based Forrester Research, in an interview with CIO magazine. "Metrics will be different from company to company."

Your metrics will depend on what you are trying to do with your site. Before you do a revamp of your site, do your research and formulate a strategy for the site.

If you have an e-commerce site you should be focused on conversion ratio (number of visitors to buyers), while a business-to-business site might be measuring visitor response to information. The number of reaches into the company as a result of the website will still be of prime importance.

A mid-size, family-owned company in California revamped their website recently and started to keep track of their visitors. Analysing user behaviour led to website tweaks and they just got their first million dollar deal as a direct result of their website.

Usability guru, Jakob Nielsen, reports that user testing and analysis of traffic on your site can increase your ROI by an average of 135%. (http://useit.com/alertbox/20030107.html)

Once the site has been researched and user tested, put a reliable, simple to use traffic tracking system on the site. Clicktracks is one that any entrepreneur can afford. In my opinion it is one of the best in terms of value and information. It is visual and interactive and can be put on any website. (http://falkoweb.com/web/method.html)

Measuring a website's success is becoming vital as ebusiness spending has to be defended. Many companies are now getting serious about Web metrics. "Until the recession hit, there wasn't much urgency around Web metrics," says Forrester Research's Souza in the interview with CIO.

The focus has shifted to getting business results, and quickly. Jupiter Research estimates that by 2006, annual spending on site analytics will reach $1 billion.

Marketing Departments and Information Technology Managers should be working together to take control of their website content and visitor click streams. With the valuable data on visitor behaviour you can get from the metrics, you can consistently improve results from your website.